Best free, portable drive cloning software

[REVERSEDSKIES]

Hiya everyone!

 

Hope I'm posting this in the right place ^^'>

 

So, as you can guess from the title I'm looking for a free and portable drive cloning program. Preferably something that is Linux based so it has support for many different file systems and can be put on a USB using something like YUMI so I can add it to my multiboot USB.
Now that my go-to software from AOMEI (partition assistant) has been changed so you now need to pay in order to clone a drive I don't really have anything I can use. I'm not a fan of easeus software as it's always a trial and I'm not about to pay for something I only use once every blue moon.

 

So if anyone here knows a reliable Linux based drive cloning tool that works for both HDDs and SSDs I'd really appreciate it!

 

Thanks for the replies!

[Electronics Wizardy]

Most linux distros will have dd, so try using that. You can use gparted if you want a gui to shrint partitions, otherwise fdisk and gdisk work fine aswell.

[BrinkGG]

6 minutes ago, REVERSEDSKIES said:

Hiya everyone!

 

Hope I'm posting this in the right place ^^'>

 

So, as you can guess from the title I'm looking for a free and portable drive cloning program. Preferably something that is Linux based so it has support for many different file systems and can be put on a USB using something like YUMI so I can add it to my multiboot USB.
Now that my go-to software from AOMEI (partition assistant) has been changed so you now need to pay in order to clone a drive I don't really have anything I can use. I'm not a fan of easeus software as it's always a trial and I'm not about to pay for something I only use once every blue moon.

 

So if anyone here knows a reliable Linux based drive cloning tool that works for both HDDs and SSDs I'd really appreciate it!

 

Thanks for the replies!

If you're looking to make a perfect 1:1 clone of a drive, check out CloneZilla. Only rule is the target drive has to be the same or larger than the source drive.

https://clonezilla.org/

[dalekphalm]

4 minutes ago, BrinkGG said:

If you're looking to make a perfect 1:1 clone of a drive, check out CloneZilla. Only rule is the target drive has to be the same or larger than the source drive.

https://clonezilla.org/

Another important note: Clonezilla won't resize partitions. So if your target drive is larger than the source, you'll have unpartitioned space left over that you will need to manually resize to fill the space.

 

Clonezilla is great, but I feel like it's lagged behind others in terms of the more advanced features we're starting to take for granted (like partition resizing, cloning to a smaller target if free space permits, etc).

[BrinkGG]

1 minute ago, dalekphalm said:

Another important note: Clonezilla won't resize partitions. So if your target drive is larger than the source, you'll have unpartitioned space left over that you will need to manually resize to fill the space.

 

Clonezilla is great, but I feel like it's lagged behind others in terms of the more advanced features we're starting to take for granted (like partition resizing, cloning to a smaller target if free space permits, etc).

You can do disk to image, ( pick a raw format like qcow2) then resize the image to remove permitting "empty space", then clone the image to a smaller disk all inside of Clonezilla. 

[REVERSEDSKIES]

2 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Another important note: Clonezilla won't resize partitions. So if your target drive is larger than the source, you'll have unpartitioned space left over that you will need to manually resize to fill the space.

 

Clonezilla is great, but I feel like it's lagged behind others in terms of the more advanced features we're starting to take for granted (like partition resizing, cloning to a smaller target if free space permits, etc).

  

Yeah I forgot to mention it would also need to be able to clone to a smaller disk, but is there nothing that can make a 1:1 clone to a smaller drive and also automatically resizes the partitions? It's actually the main reason I stopped using Clonezilla as I constantly ran into that problem.

 

15 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Most linux distros will have dd, so try using that. You can use gparted if you want a gui to shrint partitions, otherwise fdisk and gdisk work fine aswell.

I actually have no experience with DD nor fdisk nor gdisk. I tried dd once but didn't exactly know what to do and ended up ruining my SD card. I'm willing to try though since gparted never really worked. Gparted always caused the bootloader to be messed up and I'd have to make a bootable USB with a Windows installation to tyr and fix that and the process was never consistent either.

[dalekphalm]

1 minute ago, BrinkGG said:

You can do disk to image, ( pick a raw format like qcow2) then resize the image to remove permitting "empty space", then clone the image to a smaller disk all inside of Clonezilla. 

Sure but that's a very roundabout and not user-friendly way to do it. Clonezilla should simply add that feature in as an automatic option, with both disk-to-disk and disk-to-image.

[BrinkGG]

Just now, dalekphalm said:

Sure but that's a very roundabout and not user-friendly way to do it. Clonezilla should simply add that feature in as an automatic option, with both disk-to-disk and disk-to-image.

Pretty sure there are flags for images to reduce the size on move... Don't remember as I usually grab the qcow2 then go from there.

Out of curiosity, what do you use that can do smaller target disks and doesn't screw with activations of any kind? MS Office and AutoCAD in particular seems to break every time I do anything but sDisk > qcow2 > shrink > tDisk in Clonezilla.

[dalekphalm]

1 minute ago, BrinkGG said:

Pretty sure there are flags for images to reduce the size on move... Don't remember as I usually grab the qcow2 then go from there.

Out of curiosity, what do you use that can do smaller target disks and doesn't screw with activations of any kind? MS Office and AutoCAD in particular seems to break every time I do anything but sDisk > qcow2 > shrink > tDisk in Clonezilla.

Other cloning tools I've used that support disk resizing - I don't recall any activation issues with Office, etc. I don't use AutoCAD so I cannot comment on that. Macrium Reflect can do that. I'm fairly sure Acronis can too. Not sure about others.

[BrinkGG]

6 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Other cloning tools I've used that support disk resizing - I don't recall any activation issues with Office, etc. I don't use AutoCAD so I cannot comment on that. Macrium Reflect can do that. I'm fairly sure Acronis can too. Not sure about others.

Ah, that would explain why I haven't touched them. Personally, I'd rather spend an extra 2 or 3 minutes on a more complicated process then pay for software that does it for me. I understand the appeal of that though and I'll keep Reflect in mind. If I ever have to do a large migration at work (more than 1 pc every few weeks) I'll look into that again. 

Thanks  

[dalekphalm]

13 minutes ago, BrinkGG said:

Ah, that would explain why I haven't touched them. Personally, I'd rather spend an extra 2 or 3 minutes on a more complicated process then pay for software that does it for me. I understand the appeal of that though and I'll keep Reflect in mind. If I ever have to do a large migration at work (more than 1 pc every few weeks) I'll look into that again. 

Thanks  

FYI Macrium has a free version. Acronis kind of does (there's a WD Version that works as long as a WD HDD is detected).